Gores Landing, Ontario

Gore's Landing

Location of Gore's Landing in Ontario

Coordinates: 44°07′08″N 78°13′59″W / 44.119°N 78.233°W / 44.119; -78.233 Gore's Landing is a community in Ontario.

Geography

The town of Cobourg is 15 minutes to the south and the small city of Peterborough is a half-hour drive north. The surrounding area offers many outdoor, sports, cultural, antique and shopping attractions.

History

The village of Gore's Landing was named after Thomas Sinclair Gore, an Irishman who settled there in 1845.

"The Landing" was the terminus of a plank road from Cobourg to Rice Lake, where ferries met immigrant settlers heading to the northern townships across the lake. It became a popular summertime destination in its own right. Travelers were accommodated in a number of hotels and inns. The current Victoria Inn was built as "The Willows" in 1900 by Gerald Hayward, a famous painter of miniature portraits, as his summer home.

The John Bennett Ferry House, c.1838, is the oldest remaining structure in Gore’s Landing. It is still there, expanded into a cottage at Plank Road Cottages & Marina (http://www.plankroadcottages.com). The ferry service to Peterborough found its heyday in the steamboat era and molded such characters as Wilbert Harris, a retired steamboat captain who operated a tourist camp and boat livery on the same property. Guests pitched tents on the grounds and stayed for some great fishing and relaxation.

There are many historical homes and sites of interest in this hamlet with its history of poets, boat builders and artists. Catharine Parr Traill, one of Canada's foremost early writers, was a resident. Her records give an invaluable glimpse of pioneer life at Gore's Landing.

Sources

Gore's Landing and the Rice Lake Plains is a 295 page book written by Norma Martin, Catherine Milne and Donna S. McGillis and published in 1986 by Clay Publishing in nearby Bewdley. Now sadly out of print, the book is rich with detail on the area and its early history and characters. A Self-guided Walking Tour of Historic Gore's Landing is available from http://www.smallbones.ca.

Another source of early history on the area is Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West, or The Experience of an Early Settler, written by Samuel Strickland (brother of Catharine Parr Traill and Susanna Moodie) and published in London, England in 1853. It is online in Google Books.